Assembly panel approves bill prohibiting 'student success fee' at CSU

This week, the Assembly Education Committee passed legislation calling for a ban on a special "student success fee" at some California state universities.

The fee can be as much as $2,000 included in the tuition for some students.

The bill calls for student success fees to be paid out of institutional fees for low-income students.

"Student success fees at individual campuses [which] presidents can impose on their campus," bill sponsor Assem. Shirley Webber, D-San Diego, said. "And in the past, it was a situation where almost presidents did kind of a vote to see if students wanted to increase their fees ... to do things like build a student center or whatever. Recently, they've been called student success fees. Success for whom, I'm not sure. But nonetheless, campuses have begun to increasa them."

Webber says the student success fees are being imposed on more than half of the CSU campuses.

"We discovered that these things are going on without students agreeing to it," Webber said.

In addition, according to Webber, when the state allotted more money to CSU this past year, trustees were urged not to increase fees. They didn't but that didn't apply to individual campuses imposing and/or increasing the student success fee.

"So we are trying to bring some transparency," Webber said. "Fees can get out of hand. There's no real limit or control over it."